When the store I wanted to go to today was closed (as it is on all Sundays, except its website doesn't say the store hours and the phone recording indicated it would be open all day next Sunday, and I had to drive to the store to find out the normal, closed on Sunday's fact), I consoled myself by heading to Whole Foods. Food is pretty much the only purchase I can make without feeling guilty about spending money. New clothes? Nah, my old ones don't have too many visible holes yet. New running shoes? Only after I start having back pain after my usual two mile run. Dog food? Can't I just feed them my table scraps? A new car? Well, does the old one still get me from point A to point B, let's ignore safety for the moment.

So, off to Whole Foods in Mountain View for consolation shop for dinner moment.

After making my purchase, I rolled my cart into the elevator to go down one floor to the parking structure. As I stood there in the elevator, cringing at the wasted opportunity for (ever so) brief exercise of walking down the ONE FLIGHT of stairs, I pondered how much of my purchase would still be in the elevator if I shoved the cart in, pushed the button, ran out of the elevator and skipped down the stairs to meet the cart one floor down.

I left the elevator and started walking to the far back corner of the parking structure, where I had parked my car. As I passed the front cars, I noticed two people hovering around my car. One of the two people, a man, walked around the front of the car, bent over, and looked closely at the front of the car. The other person, a woman, shuffled along the side of the car, clearly wanting to be away from it.

Great. Just great, I thought. They hit my car and are trying to assess the damage. Just great. Crap like this makes me want to walk everywhere.

Or become a hermit.

I slowed to see if they would leave, but the guy showed lots of interest in the car, so I continued. As I crossed the last aisle in the lot, the guy leaned down and licked my car's hood.

I clicked the remote lock and made it chirp back at him.

He stood up, saw my approach, hurried around the car, and asked, "Is this your car?"

"It is," I answered as I popped the hatch.

"This is my dream car."

I looked at him for a moment. I'm not sure the last time I've ever heard a 20-something male state a soccer mom's car was his dream car. "Even the wagon part?"

The woman answered for him. "He's always looking for the perfect ski car. This is it."

"Ah."

"It's even a stick!" he exclaimed. OMG! I bought a manual transmission car? Crap. I guess that would explain the high RPMs and the uneven ride at high speeds. Maybe I should learn that shifting thing. I did wonder what the heck that thing was between the two front seat was/is.

"That's a custom order. There's like less than a dozen in the country or something."

I think he peed his pants when I said this.

"I've noticed when you test drive cars, you can't find a stick. They're all automatics now."

"Well, if you look you can find them."

"Yeah. Well, thanks. Nice car."

They walked away. I watched them for a while. Do I take this at face value, or remain suspicious? I mean, the last time I had a car the envy of some guy was... was... well, never.

Until now.

Went over to Keith and Katie's tonight for a Saturday night dinner and games night that Mark and Megan were hosting. I discovered Kris' hidden talent is ball orange levitation.

Apparently it works with only orange, knobby balls.

"Let's see how he does a CCCCCCCCCCCCcccccccccccCCCCCCCCCCCCCcccccCCCCCC.... Gah, a B and a D. I can't hit C."

"Sounded like a C to me."

This morning, I drove to Santa Clara, picked up three of the women I'm coaching on the women's ultimate team, and drove to Santa Cruz with them for the 2007 Sean Ryan Memorial Tournament. Kate and I seem to be consistent in our time availability with the team: every day I'm not available, she is, and any day she's not available, I am. As a result, I was coaching this one on my own.

And Kate's the one with the calm demeanor and beaucoup experience, not me.

The team had 13 women today. That's a lot for the team, even if it was about half of what the other teams brought to the tournament. What they lacked in numbers, they made up for in heart.

The first game was against Berkeley X. Berkeley had a large number of players tryout this year, so they split the team into two teams: X and Y. We played X, which had 3-4 players who could catch, throw and defend well, and another 20 who couldn't. So, the game was really, really close as both Berkeley and SCRUW, the Santa Clara women's team name, worked the disc down the field and scored sometimes, turned it over sometimes. The score went something like 1-1, 2-2, 3-3, 5-3, 5-5, 6-6, 8-7 (yay, we took half!), 9-7, 10-8, 10-10, 12-10, 12-11. Here's where the heart breaker is. If, on the score where they scored that 11th point had happened 20 seconds later, as in, a second after the hard cap went on instead of 19 seconds after they scored, the game would have been over, and Santa Clara would have won the game. As it was, the hard cap went on as the team was walking down the field to start the next point. Berkeley scored the next point, tying the game, and the following point to win the game. The game finished 15 minutes after the next game was supposed to start, so the team immediately ran over to the next field over to start the next game.

I forgot to suggest they eat something between the rushed games.

The second game was against UCLA BLU X. This team was in much the same boat as the Berkeley team: a few good players (as in, really good players), and a whole bunch of not so good players. The problem was, however, that they had three or four of these good players, compared to Berkeley's two or three. BLU was able to play three of these women pretty much in all the points and move the disc very effectively.

After a number of points of SCRUW moving the disc down the field, only to turn it over within yards of the endzone, and watching the three BLU moving score on three throws, I suggested a change in defense. We'd still force the team one direction in general, but the three women on the line who could play we'd play straight up. With a quick tutorial on how to force straight-up, and the calls incoming defense should make (left and right, brilliant, eh?), the team received the next pull, turned it over, forced straight-up on the good players, caused a turn over close to the endzone, and scored. Molly came up to me after a few points of playing straight up on BLU's top player and excitedly said, "Wow, that's totally working. She's throwing it away, and struggling!" I was so excited to hear my advice was so well received.

The final score of the second game was 4-12, so we missed our goal of 5 points by one. If we could count the "within 10 yards of the endzone" as a half point, though, the score would have been more like 10-12.

The last game was against UC Santa Cruz. Having watched the team earlier, I really thought SCRUW had a chance to win this game. I told them as much before the start of the game. However, they played more of their top line, and, well, pretty much crushed SCRUW. The team had run out of steam, run out of legs, and, well, it showed. I think they were done when the score was 1-6.

All in all, it was a great day. We need to work on initiating a stall count (rather than letting the opponent stand over the disc directing traffic, actually get that stall count going!), keeping on our opponent (no turnstile defense), and throw, throw, throwing!

On the way to work today, I noticed the music store where I bought Kris' guitar had signs up, "Store closing!" and "Everything must go!" and "Fixtures for sale!" As I walked into the office from the parking lot, I gave Kris a call. "Have you been thinking about getting an electric guitar? Because, this store is closing, but I don't want to buy something just because it's on sale. But, if you were thinking of getting one, now might be a good time."

He hadn't been actively thinking, but was definitely interested.

So, after lunch, Shirley, Doyle and I wandered over to the store to look. Oh, why did I put myself in that situation? Why, oh, why? I mean, here I've been trying to minimize my stuff, get rid of my crap, and I was standing in front of a guitar I was sure Kris would love to have, hey, we're going cheap here, and an amp that's just simply adorable, and well, crap. So, I called Kris and asked him what he'd like, and oooooooo, yes, please. He would like the one, pretty please.

I told him okay, but, well, it was his Christmas present this year. If I bought it, that's it. I'm off the hook for the rest of the year. He say, yes, please, yes, Santa, he'd like his giftie early, thank you.

Walking around, I commented that, well, if Santa wanted to, oh, I don't know, buy a bass guitar, I'm sure I could find a use for one. He was very excited about this thought also, and commented he was coming home early tonight! Doyle helped me carry all the crap back to the office, and back to work we went, trying really really hard to finish the accidental volunteer project.

Around dinner time, I wanted to show Kris something, but couldn't find him via IM. When I called his cell, he answered, "Santa? is that you Santa?"

I'd have to say, yes, that was Santa.